PEOPLE OF IWARA COMMUNITY BENEFIT FREE MEDICAL CHECKUPS AND SENSITIZATION AS ISERH MARKS 2017 WORLD HEALTH DAY!!!

Friday 7th April, 2017 was indeed a day to behold for the entire people of Iwara Community in Osun State as ISERH Management Team visited the community in commemoration of the World Health Day to sensitize them on Depression and thereafter offered them free medical checkups. Fortunately for the community, the VSO International was also on ground for free eye tests.

Iwara Community is predominantly agrarian community that is well endowed with fertile land for farming with an evenly distributed population between the aged and the youth. From our findings, there is a low patronage of the Primary Health Center in the community by the people. In order to effect a positive behavioural and attitudinal change of the people, ISERH Team met with the community Monarch to seek his approval for our sensitizing his people on the World Health Day, which he enthusiastically welcomed and approved.

ISERH Team adopted DEPRESSION as a topic to sensitize the people of the community about, consequent upon the facts that rural areas experience ‘outflux’ of young and able population to urban center in search of greener pasture, which thereafter leave the aged left behind depressed and lonely. In order to help both the aged and the presently-resident youth understand the effect of DEPRESSION, we have to sensitize them on the facts that depression is a real illness, it affects people in different ways and it is treatable. They have to understand that, if one is depressed, s/he is not alone in the status, as millions of people are facing depression globally.

Having had the foresight knowledge of the reasons behind the dwellers of the community’s low patronage of their Primary Health Center, we decided to take free Medical Checkups to them and give them first-hand information on how to cope with depression and ailments.

 Few ISERH Team Members with some Members of VSO International Team

Having done this without any support, what-so-ever, from government or any individual, we hereby call on well-meaning individuals to kindly regularly visit their community for the purpose of engaging their people in dialogues, sensitizations and medical checks.  One thing is to lobby in getting government’s basic infrastructures for our community people, another thing is to consistently engage, encourage and sensitize the people on the usage of such infrastructures.

 ISERH Team Members who visited Iwara Community

ISERH has launched this program this year and we shall, by God’s Will, continue going round our communities within the country, with the same mission, most especially in Aprils during World Health Days, whether we are funded or not. We have resolved to positively influence our people’s structural, medical and behavioural orientation.

Together, we shall make Nigeria great again…

Signed:

Mrs. A. T. Haastrup (BNSC, RPN, RPHN)

ISERH Health Program Director